Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams by William H. Seward (easy books to read txt) 📕

manly eloquence of the elder Adams; and we listen to the voices of the philosophic and sagacious Jefferson, the refined and modest Madison, and the generous and faithful Monroe.

"A life of such eminent patriotism and fidelity found its proper reward in your elevation to the eminence from which you had justly derived so many honors. Although your administration of the government is yet too recent for impartial history, or unbounded eulogy, our grateful remembrance of it is evinced by the congratulations you now receive from your fellow-citizens.

"But your claims to the veneration of your countrymen do not end here. Your predecessors descended from the Chief Magistracy to enjoy, in repose and tranquillity, honors even greater than those which belonged to that eminent station. It was reserved for you to illustrate the important truths, that offices and trusts are not the end of public service, but are merely incidents in the life of the true American citizen; that duties remain when the highest trust is resigned; and that there is scope for a pure and benevolent ambition beyond even the Presidency of the United States of America.

"You have devoted the energies of a mind unperverted, the learning and experience acquired through more than sixty years, and even the influence and fame derived from your high career of public service, to the great cause of universal liberty. The praises we bestow are already echoed back to us by voices which come rich and full across the Atlantic, hailing you as the indefatigable champion of humanity - not the humanity which embraces a single race or clime, but that humanity which regards the whole family of MAN. Such salutations as these cannot be mistaken. They come not from your contemporaries, for they are gone - you are not of this generation, but of the PAST, spared to hear the voice of POSTERITY. The greetings you receive come up from the dark and uncertain FUTURE. They are the whisperings of posthumous FAME - fame which impatiently awaits your departure, and which, spreading wider and growing more and more distinct, will award to JOHN QUINCY ADAMS a name to live with that of WASHINGTON!"

The audience expressed their sympathy with this address by long and enthusiastic cheering. When order was restored, Mr. Adams rose, evidently under great and unaffected embarrassment.

He replied to the speech in an address of about half an hour, during which the attention of his audience was riveted upon the speaker, with intense interest and affection. He declared the embarrassment he felt in speaking. He was sensible that his fellow-citizens had laid aside all partizan feelings in coming up to greet him. He desired to speak what would not wound the feelings of anyone. He was grateful, deeply grateful, to them all. But on what subject of public interest could a public man speak, that would find harmony among an intelligent, thinking people? There were such subjects, but he could not speak of them.

The people of Western New York had always been eminently just and generous to him, and had recently proved their kindness on various occasions, by inviting him to address the State Agricultural Society on agriculture. But his life had been spent in the closet, in diplomacy, or in the cabinet; and he had not learned the practice, or even the theory of agriculture. After what he had seen of the harvests of Western New York, bursting with food for the sustenance of man, for him to address the people of such a district on agriculture, would be as absurd as the vanity of the rhetorician who went to Carthage to instruct Hannibal in the art of war. He had been solicited to address the young. In his life time he had been an instructor of youth, and, strange as from his present display they might think it, he had instructed them in the art of eloquence. And there was no more honorable office on earth than instructing the young. But the schools and seminaries had passed him, while he was engaged in other pursuits; and for him now to attempt to instruct the young of this generation, would evince only the garrulousness of age.

He had been invited to discourse on internal improvement; but that was a subject he feared to touch. On one point, however, all men agreed. All were in favor of internal improvement. But there was a balance between the reasonable sacrifices of this generation, and the burden it had a right to cast upon posterity, and every individual might justly claim to hold his balance for himself. One thing, however, he was sure he might assume with safety. In looking over the State of New York, upon its canals and railroads, which brought the borders of the State into contiguity, and its citizens in every part into communion with each other, he was sure that all rejoiced, and might well glory in what had been accomplished.

Mr. A. said he had read and endeavored to inform himself concerning prison discipline, a subject deeply interesting to the peace, good order, and welfare of society; but after his examination of the penitentiary here, he was satisfied that he was yet a learner, instead of being able to give instruction on that important subject.

He had been asked to enlist in the growing army of temperance, and discourse on that cause, so deeply cherished by every well wisher of our country. And he would cheerfully speak; but other and more devoted men had occupied the field, and what was left for him to say on temperance? In passing through Catholic Lower Canada he saw a column erected to the Virgin Mary, in gratitude for her promotion of the temperance cause. If indeed the blessed Virgin did lend her aid to that great work, it would almost win him to worship at her shrine, although he belonged to that class of people who rejected the invocation of saints.

He felt, therefore, that he had no subject on which to address them, but himself and his own public life. The experience of an old man, related by himself, would, he feared, be more irksome than profitable.

"What, then, am I to say? I am summoned here to speak, and to reply to what has been said to me by my respected friend, your late Chief Magistrate. And what is the theme he has given me? It is myself. And what can I say on such a subject? To know that he entertains, or that you entertain for me the sentiments he has expressed, absolutely overpowers me. I cannot go on. The only answer I can make, is a declaration, that during my public service, now protracted to nearly the age of eighty, I have endeavored to serve my country honestly and faithfully. How imperfectly I have done this, none seem so sensible as myself. I must stop. I can only repeat thanks, thanks, thanks to you, one and all, and implore the blessings of God upon you and your children."

At the conclusion of this reply, Mr. Adams was introduced to a large number of the ladies and gentlemen assembled in the church. He then returned to the American Hotel, where he remained an hour, receiving the visits of the citizens of the adjoining towns. At 11 o'clock the Auburn Guards escorted Mr. Adams and the committee, followed by a large procession, to the car-house. Accompanied by Gov. Seward, Judge Miller, Hon. Christopher Morgan, the committee, Auburn Guards, and a number of the citizens of Auburn, he was conveyed in an extra train of cars, in an hour and five minutes, to Syracuse.

At Syracuse, at Utica, at Albany, the same spontaneous outgushing manifestations of respect and affection met him that had hitherto attended his journey in every populous place through which he passed. In his reply to the address of Mr. Barnard, at Albany, he concluded in the following words: -

"Lingering as I am on the stage of public life, and, as many of you may think, lingering beyond the period when nature calls for repose - while I remain in the station which I now occupy in the Congress of the United States, if you, my hearers, as an assembly, or if anyone among you, as an individual, have any object or purpose to promote, or any end to secure that he believes can in any way advance his interests or increase his happiness, then, in the name of God, I ask you to send your petitions to me! (Tremendous cheering.) I hope this is not trespassing too far on politics. (Laughter, and cheers.) I unhesitatingly promise you, one and all, that if I can in any way serve you in that station, I will do it most cheerfully; regarding it as the choicest blessing of God, if I shall thus be enabled to make some just return for the kind attentions which you have this day bestowed upon me."

In his route homeward, Mr. Adams was received and entertained in a very handsome manner by the people of Pittsfield, Mass. He was addressed by Hon. George N. Briggs, who alluded, in eloquent terms, to his long and distinguished public services. Mr. Adams, in reply, spoke of the scenes amidst which he had passed his early youth, and of the influence which they exerted in forming his character and shaping his purposes. "In 1775," said he, "the minute men from a hundred towns in the province were marching, at a moment's warning, to the scene of opening war. Many of them called at my father's house in Quincy, and received the hospitality of John Adams. All were lodged in the house which the house would contain; others in the barns, and wherever they could find a place. There were then in my father's kitchen some dozen or two of pewter spoons; and I well recollect going into the kitchen and seeing some of the men engaged in running those spoons into bullets for the use of the troops! Do you wonder," said he, "that a boy of seven years of age, who witnessed this scene, should be a patriot?"

In the fall of the same year, Mr. Adams received an invitation from the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, to visit that city, and assist in the ceremony of laying the corner stone of an observatory, to be erected on an eminence called Mount Ida. The invitation was accepted. On his journey to Cincinnati, the same demonstrations of respect, the same eagerness to honor the aged patriarch were manifested in the various cities and towns through which he passed, as on his summer tour.

324 LIFE OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

The ceremony of laying the corner stone took place on the 9th of November, 1843. Mr. Adams delivered an address on the occasion, replete with eloquence, wisdom, philosophy, and religion. The following beautiful extract will afford a specimen: -

"The various difficult, and, in many respects, opposite motives which have impelled mankind to the study of the stars, have had a singular effect in complicating and confounding the recommendation of the science. Religion, idolatry, superstition, curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the passion for penetrating the secrets of nature, the warfare of the huntsman by night and by day against the beast of the forest and of the field, the meditations of the shepherd in the custody and wanderings of his flocks, the influence of the revolving seasons of the year, and the successive garniture of the firmament upon the labors of the husbandman, upon the seed time and the harvest, the blooming of flowers, the ripening of the vintage, the polar pilot of the navigator, and the mysterious magnet of the mariner - all, in harmonious action, stimulate the child of earth and of heaven to interrogate the dazzling splendors of the sky, to